Russian Revolution, WWI Treaties, and Interwar Political Movements

October Revolution

This was the 1917 revolution in Russia that occurred when the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin seized power in a coup and took power from the Liberal Government under Alexander Kerensky.

Bolsheviks

These were the members of the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (later called the Russian Communist Party), and they were led by Vladimir Lenin.

Vladimir Lenin

This man was the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Communist Party. He was the architect of the October Revolution in 1917.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

This was the treaty that the Bolsheviks signed along with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918. This treaty allowed Russia to leave the war, but it had to give up its western non-Russian speaking territories such as Finland, part of Poland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia.

Treaty of Versailles

This was the treaty negotiated in 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I. It was negotiated by the leaders of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. The treaty was designed to punish Germany.

Politburo

This was the highest body in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the chairman of this body was the de facto leader of the Soviet Union.

Weimar Republic

This was the name of the ineffectual democratic republic that ruled Germany from 1919 to 1933.

Polish Corridor

This was a strip of land that extended south from the city of Danzig and that was taken from Germany after World War I and given to Poland. There was a significant German minority population in this strip of land, and Adolf Hitler used this as a pretext to invade Poland in 1939.

Locarno Conference

This was a 1925 conference in which France and Germany signed a treaty that guaranteed their boundary. The two countries also agreed not to attack each other in the future.

Chiang Kai-shek

This man was the leader of the Kuomintang (or Nationalist Party) in China from 1925 until 1949. It was in 1949 that he and his Kuomintang Party were forced from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan by the Chinese Communist Party and its People's Liberation Army.

Mao Zedong

This man emerged as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party during the Long March of the 1930s. He led this party and its People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Communist Revolution from 1946 to 1949.

Washington Naval Conference

This was a conference held in Washington from 1921 to 1922. At this conference, the United States, France, Britain, Italy, and Japan also agreed to the Five Power Pact, and this treaty limited the number and tonnage of naval vessels each could have in their navies.

First Five-Year Plan

This was a program instituted by Joseph Stalin in 1928 and that went on until 1933. Under this program, the Soviet Union developed an industrialized economy and forced peasant farmers to live on collectively owned farms.

Forced Collectivization

This was part of Joseph Stalin's First Five-Year Program that began in 1928. It involved forcing peasant farmers in Russia to join large collectively owned farms where all land, animals, and tools would be owned communally. Peasants of all ranks resisted it, and agricultural output dropped dramatically. Ultimately, it led the deaths of between 6 million to 12 million Soviet citizens.

Great Purge

This was an event from 1936 to 1938 by which Joseph Stalin removed all of his perceived enemies from the Soviet Communist Party, the Red Army, and other Soviet institutions.

Mein Kampf

This book was written by Adolf Hitler during his year in prison from 1924 to 1925, and it outlined his plans to take over Germany.

Lebensraum

This is a German term that translates as 'living space,' and it was the word that Adolf Hitler used to describe his foreign policy.

Joseph Goebbels

This man was in charge of propaganda for the Nazi Party, and after Hitler gained dictatorial power in 1933, he became Hitler's minister of propaganda.

Sturmabteilung

Known in English as the Storm Troopers, this was the paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party during the 1920s and early 1930s. Hitler liquidated the organization in 1934 when he feared its members under the leadership of Ernst Röhm might try to take power from him.

Waffen SS

In Nazi Germany, these were the armed units of the Schutzstaffel. These units were separate from the German army, were considered elite, and generally were made up of staunch Nazis.

Hideki Tojo

This man was a Japanese army officer who became prime minister of Japan in 1941 as well as the commander of all Japanese military forces. He planned and authorized the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Mukden Incident

This was an incident in Manchuria in 1931 in which the Japanese army blew up a Japanese railroad near the capital city, blamed it on the troops of a local Chinese warlord, and used the incident as an excuse to take over Manchuria.

Anti-Comintern Pact

This was a pact between Japan and Germany made in 1936, pledging neutrality if either country became involved in a war with the Soviet Union.

Anschluss

This word is German for 'annexation' and refers to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.

Maginot Line

This was a massive defensive line built by the French between World War I and World War II, designed to thwart another German invasion.

Stuka Dive Bomber

This airplane was the principal provider of close air support for the Germans during World War II. Its main purpose was to provide support to German ground troops by attacking ground targets from the air. It was remarkably accurate and dropped bombs in a precision manner by going into a steep, vertical dive.

Russo-Finnish War

This was a war fought between the Soviet Union and Finland in the winter of 1939 and 1940. While the Soviet Red Army went into Finland with overwhelming force, the invasion was badly managed, and the smaller Finnish force fought back heroically and effectively. In the end, the Soviet Union only took small parts of Finland and failed to fully conquer the country.

Dunkirk

During the initial conquest of France, this was the spot on the French coast of the English channel where the British expeditionary force and some French forces evacuated to Great Britain in any available watercraft. This evacuation occurred from May 26 to June 4, 1940.

Vichy Republic

This was a proto-fascist state set up in southern France after the armistice in June 1940. Henri Pétain was the president of this country, which, while independent, essentially became a satellite state of Nazi Germany.

Charles de Gaulle

This French general commanded the Free French Forces during World War II and later served as president of France.

Operation Sea Lion

This was the code name for the planned German amphibious invasion of Great Britain in August 1940.

Battle of Britain

This is the name given to the air war fought over Great Britain during late 1940 and early 1941 between Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and the Britain's Royal Air Force.

Erwin Rommel

This German general was the commander of the famed Afrika Korps. He won many spectacular victories for Nazi Germany in North Africa.